The Scottish Government has announced it will re-open Scotland’s climate change legislation to drop a key climate target of reducing emissions by 75% by 2030.
The news follows an independent assessment by the Scottish Government’s own independent climate advisors, the Committee on Climate Change, that the target was ‘no longer credible’.
The Scottish Government says that while the longer-term goal of reaching net zero by 2045 will remain unchanged but the system of legal annual targets will be replaced by five-yearly carbon budgets.
It made the announcement while setting out a range of measures which it says will help to accelerate emission reduction, with a focus on key high-emitting sectors.
Responding to pressure from campaigners, including Oxfam Scotland, Ministers have committed to exploring the use of fair tax reforms to incentivise key polluters to reduce their emissions, such as through carbon land taxes, levies on flying, and changes to Non-Domestic Rates.
Responding to the news, Jamie Livingstone, Head of Oxfam Scotland, said: “The Scottish Government’s abandonment of its legal 2030 and annual emissions reduction targets is a reprehensible retreat caused by its recklessly inadequate level of action to date.
“With scientists linking deadly heatwaves in West Africa to climate change and Dubai drowning in a deluge of rain, the urgency of climate action couldn’t be clearer.
“The announcement of largely recycled measures represents baby steps forward rather than the giant leaps needed and are a thinly veiled distraction from Ministers’ failure to deliver their existing climate commitments. Unless the Scottish Parliament unites and acts to swiftly, fairly raise the funds needed to deliver on its latest climate promises, they will amount to little more than hot air.”
/ENDS
For more information and interviews, please contact: Rebecca Lozza, Oxfam Media and Communications Adviser, Scotland and Wales: rlozza1@oxfam.org.uk / 07917738450